We avoided the D-word. The boys are five, and while they had their suspicions about Florida, they were pretty sure Disneyland was in France. No, Florida was going to be swimming and the beach, manatees and alligators, and real Americans speaking with American accents. Oh, and there were going to be space rockets, too. Lots of them - like the one in the Science Museum, but much, much bigger.
Which was fine. Especially the rockets bit, as far as dad was concerned. My interest - and indeed my hairstyle - dates from The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe's tale of test-pilot culture and the first Americans in space. The more you find out about the space programme, the more incredible it becomes. You start with what most people already know - John Glenn orbiting the earth, Neil Armstrong's "one small step" - and gradually find yourself saying: they did what? Take the Saturn V rocket, built to hurl Apollo spacecraft towards the moon. It's vast: taller than a 30-storey office block. It weighs as much as a warship. Two minutes after launch it is 40 miles up - and still accelerating.
Even more astonishing is how small some were. Look at the Redstone: a converted missile which lobbed America's first astronauts into brief spaceflight, it was barely more powerful than the German V2s of the second world war - yet they put a man on top of it in a Mercury capsule. Somehow the enormous Saturn V, with all that technology and power and engineering, seems more believable than the tiny Redstone. It was the Redstone that I had to see with my own eyes. And the family were going to have to see it, too.
Cocoa Beach, as readers of Wolfe will know, was where the early astronauts hung out: beers at the beach bar in the Holiday Inn, dinners at Bernard's Surf on South Atlantic Avenue, and the length of highway A1A for midnight races in their Corvettes. In the late 1950s, this was a sun-baked rat-shack strip of gas stations, bars and motels, if Wolfe is to be believed, and while that's no longer so, there's still plenty of resonance: Bernard's Surf is owned by the same family, the Holiday Inn is still there, and when you check in today, you're standing on the site of Wolfie's, the only deli ever to have sent a corned beef sandwich into orbit (in John Young's boot aboard Gemini 3 - space food was terrible in those days).
The Holiday Inn has expanded, but it's still a motel-style low-rise and not without some residual 1950s charm. It has a large, child-friendly pool, it serves enormous buffet breakfasts (kids eat free) and our family room had a partitioned-off children's area with bunk beds and its own huge TV. Cocoa Beach itself (population 20,000) is the jewel in the crown of the "Space Coast", as Brevard County markets itself, although its average visitor is from somewhere else in Florida, and foreigners are still quite exotic. The beach is broad and golden, there are hotels and restaurants aplenty, and the Atlantic surf is well known among aficionados. Otherwise, the area's unusual popularity is difficult to explain, even for the locals.
"It has a lot to do with the TV show I Dream Of Jeannie," says Tom Bartosek of the Space Coast office of tourism. "It was set here, and it's still really popular on cable, so people know the name. Also," he adds archly, "the owner of USA Today has a place here. So Cocoa Beach is always on their weather map on the back page." You get the feeling that maybe the locals are trying to keep the place secret.
The Space Center, of course, is the biggest draw. Cape Canaveral is one of the few places on the planet where you can see a rocket launch, and all space-shuttle missions blasted off from here prior to the programme being suspended following the tragedy that befell the Columbia mission during re-entry on February 1.
In stark contrast to the cutting-edge technology and ear-bending din of rockets roaring skywards from the Cape, eco-tourism is also huge on the Space Coast. The 220-square-mile national wildlife refuge at Merritt Island, made up of brackish rivers, swamps and low-lying land ideal for wildlife, is second only to the Everglades in Florida's league of wild places, and a two-hour excursion with Island Boat Lines soon demonstrates why. Even before we climbed aboard, we were watching dolphins cavorting yards from the shore and manatees snuffling around the dock at our feet. But once under way, it's the exceptional bird life that makes the most impression: there seemed to be an osprey perched on every other tree.
If the civilised, shaded comfort of a passenger launch is too luxurious, get down to water level. Blue Heron Adventures runs two-hour paddling nature tours of the jungly backwaters in two-seat kayaks. Sunhats, sunblock, Polarised sunglasses and drinking water are included, thankfully, and no prior experience is required.
You're not allowed to touch manatees - their protection is a big political issue in Florida - but if your fingers are dangling in the water and they choose to touch you, well... the boys found this really exciting. Manatees are huge, gentle beasts that grow to more than 15 feet and weigh almost a tonne. One of ours, sadly, had a fresh propeller scar on its back.
Only in the US could a 50mph aluminium raft powered by a 454 cubic inch V8 car engine with an aircraft propeller also be regarded as an ecological form of transport, but the airboat was originally invented for the shallow swamps of the Everglades and is also a practical mode of travel in the magnificent wilderness of St John's river.
Twister Airboat Rides run half-hour trips throughout the year. It's the quintessential Florida ride. There's no keel, no gears, no brakes and, fortunately, no manatees around here, but what you do see is alligators, and lots of them. The boat slows to a halt, the engine is switched off, you take off your ear defenders and the silence of the wilderness descends on you. And then you're off again, at breakneck speed. Getting close to nature was never this much fun.
For a less frenetic up-close look at our fellow creatures, there's always Brevard Zoo, which is shady, child-friendly and laid out with Australian, South American and Floridian zones (Africa follows this year). You can see otters underwater, the red wolf (a one-time Florida resident), puma, dingo and sloths. There's a free-flight aviary in which you can feed the birds and, with raised boardwalks running right through the 28-acre site, all the animals were unusually visible. It kept the boys happily engaged for several hours.
If the Space Center doesn't provide enough of a hardware fix, check out the nearby Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum, at the Space Coast Regional Airport. Financed entirely by voluntary donations, in the UK it would be a leaky hangar containing one mildewed bomber and a collection of rusty parts. But this is the US, and on our visit they were celebrating the roll-out of a pristine jet fighter, whose restoration had been entirely funded by one donation from a wealthy ex-pilot. It's a little gem of a museum, very strong on American naval types from the 1940s to the Vietnam era, with plenty of memorabilia, a good shop and one of its two hangars devoted to restoration.
And what about the rockets? The Kennedy Space Center is still the epicentre of the US space programme, and dozens of launch pads, active and derelict, line the Cape Canaveral shoreline. You can visit them on "special interest tours" (and walk on the very pad where the first US astronauts were blasted into space), but even the standard coach trip around the site drives close by the giant vehicle assembly building, stops at the LC-39 observation gantry, and deposits you at the Apollo/Saturn V Center, where you can have lunch in the shadow of a Saturn V rocket laid on its side. It's the real thing: this one would have launched the Apollo 18 moonshot, but the programme was cancelled.
There's also a piece of moon rock that you're allowed to touch, and the theatre shows an excellent and surprising multimedia show about the Apollo 11 mission. The restaurant, one of several in the Space Center, is more than adequate for a family lunch.
There is more to see and do in the Space Center than one visit will allow, and plenty for children, too - with regular breaks and ice creams, they'll easily last the course. The "rocket garden" at the visitor centre is a tethered collection of early US rockets spaced out like sculptures in a park, pointing at the stars. Titan, Juno and Atlas, they're all there - and off to one side, with the black cone of a one-man Mercury capsule mounted on its tip, stands a Redstone. By golly, it's small. They did what?
Way to go
Getting there: Delta Airlines (0800-414767, delta.com) flies Gatwick-Melbourne airport, Brevard County, via Atlanta from £455.80 inc tax.
Getting around: You can't do a holiday like this without a car: rent one at the airport. Our big, comfortable air-conditioned Buick Century from Avis (08700 100287, avis.com) cost just under $400 for the week. Driving in the US is stress-free: everyone's got a lazy automatic like yours and they just lallygag along.
Where to stay: Brevard County is not over-subscribed with hotel rooms: just 9,500 or so (compared with Orlando's 100,000-plus). We recommend the Holiday Inn Cocoa Beach (Oceanfront Resort, 1300 N Atlantic Avenue, tel: +321 783 2271) - it's not glamorous, but it's excellent for a family holiday with young children. Room rate $89 to $129 a night depending on season.
Where to eat: It's easy to find places in the US that welcome children. What's difficult is finding vegetables. 'Just broccoli and cauliflower,' replied one puzzled waitress, plainly thinking us strange. Grills, 505 Glencheek Drive, Cape Canaveral (+321 868 2226) has a lively atmosphere, great seafood and ships outside the window. Have a drink among the anglers at the bar on the end of Cocoa Beach Pier. Sunset Cafe, 500 W Cocoa Beach Causeway, + 321 783 8485); go for a dolphin-spotting lunch and then spend a couple of hours in Cocoa Village itself, which is actually quite old and has good shops, fantastic pottery, a park with a playground and a fountain you can jump around in, and several places to eat.
Where to go: (Kennedy Space Center (+321 449 4444) KennedySpaceCenter.com) Special Interest Tours $20pp. Island Boat Lines (+321 454 7414, IslandBoatLines.com). $18.50pp. Blue Heron Adventures (+321 799 3740. BlueHeronAdventures.com). Twister Airboat Rides, 8199 SR 520 at St John's River (+321 632 4199, twisterairboatrides.com) adults $15, children $6. Brevard Zoo, 8225 N Wickham, Melbourne (+321 254 9453 brevardzoo.org) adults $7, children $5. Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum, 6600 Tico Rd, Titusville (+321 268 1941) adults $9, children $5.
Further information
Country code: 00 1.
Flight time London-Melbourne: 9hrs, 45mins.
Time difference: -5hrs.
£1 = 1.59 dollars.
